Not Now, Not Ever

Thursday, August 28, 2014

I Need A Shower

Each of us lives in a unique cloud of germs, and we carry it everywhere we go, a new study finds.

It settles into our
homes and even hotel rooms, and a person’s particular germ fingerprint
may be a better way to track them than real fingerprints or even DNA,
the researchers report in the journal Science.

They sampled seven
families, including 18 people, three dogs and a cat. Three of the
families moved during the study, so the researchers tested two houses
plus hotel rooms for each of them.

The volunteers swabbed their hands, noses and feet, as well as floors, counters and other surfaces in their homes.

Snip

The analysis confirmed what
scientists have learned in recent years about the microbiome — the
collection of bacteria, yeast and viruses that live in and on our
bodies. Each person has a unique collection of these germs. What they
also found was that everyone spreads this cloud around.

“We had a young couple
that moved from a hotel into a new house,” Jack Gilbert, an
environmental microbiologist at Argonne National Laboratories and the
University of Chicago, told NBC News. “Their microbiomes overwhelmed the
microbiome of the hotel room so their hotel room looked more like their
new home, microbially speaking.” And it only took a day for it to
happen.

This aura or cloud of germs defines who people are and who they spend time with.

They say that this is probably why dogs can track you so well,the microbes that you leave behind when you touch things begin to grow and bloom, leaving a unique trail of your very own behind.

They also hint that this could be yet another way to keep track of and identify you.

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